What was the effect, domestically and internationally of Blairs support of Bush in the Iraq war
What was the effect, domestically and internationally of Blair’s support of Bush in the Iraq war?
Early in the year 2002 Tony Blair assured George W. Bush that the United Kingdom would support the United States of America in the event of a war in the Iraq crisis. It should not take more than another year for this war to start. On March 20, 2003 to be precisely, the United Kingdom joined the American forces in attacking Iraq. The attack was based on the presumption that Iraq, under the command of Saddam Hussein, had acquired weapons of mass destruction and was proposing a severe threat to the peace of our world. This reason was and still is heavily criticized as the United Nations Security Council did not give its mandate for the war in the first place and up until today, no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Inspections have shown that Iraq had abandoned the programs of developing or acquiring this kind of weapon earlier.
When the United Kingdom under the leadership of Tony Blair attacked Iraq together with the United States on March 20, 2003 this should have significant consequences for the country. The term paper at hand will try to illustrate some of these consequences and illustrate both the influences on domestic and the international affairs for the United Kingdom in the early years after the war.
Domestic Effects
Being involved in the war in Iraq and therefore being one of the forces fighting George Bush’s so called “War on Terror” had several influences on the situation of the domestic policy of the UK. Having taken part in the attack, the country considered itself more exposed to the threat of terrorism as ever before. The fear should be justified. On July 7, 2005 London suffered from a series of suicide bombings in the heart of the city.
The participation in the war and these incidents brought a change in fundamental rights and freedoms to the UK. The New Labour government of Tony Blair had adopted a critical position towards fundamental rights and freedoms in general, which caused that the following anti-terrorism measures and supervision of the society war carried out in even stricter ways. Andrew Gamble calls it an erosion of civil liberties hinting the increasing control and surveillance methods in the public sector. Fears that Britain could become a surveillance society arose early. In 2006 people were afraid that the country could just sleep-walk into an omnipresent state of supervision and monitoring; at that time, Britain already had one surveillance camera for every 14 people. This development continued. In 2009 the Daily Telegraph wrote that access to private affairs like emails and telephones of people was sought up to 1400 times a day and this should not be the end of the decline of the private sphere of people as in 2010, the methods of surveillance were intensified and expanded further. Another movement, which goes alongside with the mentioned development but shall only be mentioned briefly here, is the politicization of intelligence; a term describing the lack of neutrality of news and news agencies and generally too much intertwining between intelligence and the politics of a country. The Blair government “enshrined [...] the degradation of the public and the lionisation of the private.”
Together with these strict politics and monitoring measures, the interfering in Iraq caused the reputation of Blair and his party to become worse and worse, which can be seen as another domestic consequence of the Iraq war. This decline in popularity had started with the beginning of the war, as there had always been protests and resistance in Britain. In 2003 about 750 000 people went on the streets and raised their voices; it was the biggest demonstration in the UK ever. The problems went on. Blair had difficulties justifying and legalizing his decision as the attacked had been carried out without the UN’s. He started to lose support in his own party as Robin Cook resigned because of the doubtful legality of the military action. Having opposed Blair in public, Claire Short followed two months after that. The last time two cabinet ministers resigned because of foreign policy was in 1914, which underlines the severity of the situation. The circumstances became more and more complicated. After more than a year of war in Iraq, still no weapons of mass destruction had been found. Yet, Blair remained convinced that they would be found eventually but, as we know today, he should be proven wrong. By late 2003, the Iraq war had cost the Labour party and Blair already a considerable part of their previous reputation with their voters and the media. In his article Foreign and Europeon Policy, which was published in 2004, Jim Buller still argues that Blair’s position might be stronger than ever before but the elections in 2005 showed otherwise. From 2001 until 2005 the Labour Party had become much weaker. Labour Activism declined and the party was losing more and more members; defeats in local elections came in addition. More and more Labour supporters who had initially remained silent about the measures Blair and his party were taking raised their voices now. Labour still managed to achieve an adequate majority in 2005, yet it depended a lot more on the centrally controlled media and campaigning than it had before. If it is considered that the same vote share meant a loss for Labour in 1992 and that a great part of this victory is due to the changed electoral system, it becomes clear that Tony Blair and Labour were on the decline. It is consensus that the result has its origin in Blair’s increasing unpopularity which in turn stems from the interference in the Iraq war. The downtrend of Labour continued in the following years. Tony Blair resigned and was replaced by Gordon Brown while Labour suffered heavy losses in the London mayoral elections and other local elections. The unpopularity of Brown is often seen as a key element in this context. Labour was not able to continue its leadership in the 2010 elections and Gordon Brown stepped down.
